Selective compartmental dominance: an explanation for a noninfectious, multifactorial etiology for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), and a rationale for ozone therapy and other immune modulating therapies.

The most widely accepted etiological explanation for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) currently invokes an infectious model involving the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Because this infectious model has failed to meet any conventional criteria for establishing microbial causation, this theory still relies on the high, though not perfect, statistical correlation linking presence of HIV antibodies with patients diagnosed with, and at risk for the syndrome. Many scientists and clinicians now doubt the HIV theory, though, and propose instead a multifactorial causation similar to that seen in cancer and heart disease. In order to discard the HIV model, however, it is necessary to explain the high statistical correlation mentioned above. Recent studies involving cellular mediated immunity and cytokine modulation may explain this statistical relationship without the need to invoke infectious causation, by suggesting certain functional characteristics and feedback loops in the immune system which the author calls selective compartmental dominance (SCD). SCD provides a model in which chronic dominance of the humoral immune compartment secondary to chronic high-dose antigenic challenge results in chronic suppression of the cellular immune compartment. This model predicts that even HIV-negative members of the risk groups are susceptible to AIDS, assigns no special causal role for HIV in AIDS, and suggests a rational course of nontoxic therapy that can potentially reverse cases in the earlier stages.